Moments In Time
by Brightgemini
Summary: I figured it was time to jump on the bandwagon and do a series of semi connected one shots about Abby and Connor's time in the Cretaceous Era, but to try and jazz things up a little bit, I'm also throwing in some glimpses of what things were like for the people they left behind. Going to be heavy on the angst. The rating will be earned in later chapters. Abby/Connor


**Okay, so as I said in the summary, this is going to be the first in a series of semi-connected one shots. It will be heavy on the angst. We will likely jump around in time a fair bit. I will probably be updating inconsistently because I'll just write these one shots when the inspiration strikes me. And there will be mature subject matter and possibly triggering content at some point, I will try to label things appropriately.**

**I hope you enjoy.**

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It didn't really occur to her until they were huddled in their shelter on their third day in the Cretaceous, how much she'd simply never asked about Connor. How much she'd never told him. They had lived together for three years and she really did consider him her best mate, but in the oppressive darkness and silence of night devoid of cars and streetlights, all the unspoken things between them felt like a great chasm that she didn't quite know how to bridge.

"Abby?" She was a little startled by Connor's hissed whisper, "Abby, are you still awake?"

"Yeah." She whispered back, "Can't sleep."

"It's too quiet." He observed, taking the words right out of her mouth, though he was immediately disproved by the distant echoing cry of some strange creature, "And too strange…"

"I thought you liked camping out?" She teased, fondly thinking back to the first time they'd skipped out in the woods together, back when their biggest concerns were his dumb college friends and his own big mouth.

"Right." She could hear the slight smile in his voice, "Just said that to impress you, didn't I?"

"Didn't work." She pointed out.

"Yeah, I got that when you asked if Stephen fancied you." He huffed, "I don't hate camping, actually used to actually quite enjoy it with me gramps, this just isn't me favourite location."

"Sorry. Next time we'll go to a nice holiday park." He chuckled softly at that suggestion, so she ventured, "Did you and your grandfather go camping a lot?"

He hesitated, likely surprised by her sudden interest, "Yeah, every summer till I was thirteen. Sometimes me mum came too, but we went alone a lot. Mum said I needed the male bonding time."

"Your dad never went with you?" She wondered if she was going to regret asking that. Connor never spoke about his father, though she had never encouraged him to talk about his family because she didn't really care to talk about her own.

This time his hesitation felt more… pregnant, like he had just realized she didn't know anything about him. Maybe she didn't, she realized as he finally admitted, "I didn't have a dad. He left when I was three."

She felt a little swell of guilt for making him talk about it, "Sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

"'S okay." He said quickly, "I don't remember him at all. I just remembered me mum cried and I thought it was real scary."

"My dad died." She admitted, feeling that she owed him something in return, a little scrap of proof that she understood, "He was in a motor accident when I was six. I barely remember him. Jack was only two, he doesn't remember at all."

"I hear dads are over rated." He said it in a joking tone, but she knew him well enough to hear the bitter undertones in his voice.

"Step dads certainly are." She scoffed, "Mine was a right bastard."

"Is that why you were in foster care?" She froze at the question, letting the silence hang between them for a long moment before he sheepishly continued, "I'm sorry, it was mentioned in your personnel file. I didn't read why. It wasn't… it wasn't my business. I'm sorry I looked at all."

She let the silence sit for another moment and when she spoke again her voice was so soft she was sure he wasn't going to hear her, "He hit me."

"Abby, I'm sorry." He repeated in a whisper, his fingers reaching out to brush her shoulder, like he wanted to offer her comfort but wasn't sure she wanted it.

She wasn't sure if she wanted it either, but she didn't push him away, letting him trace little patterns on her arm while changing the subject back to him, "Why did you stop camping? You and your gramps? Did he…?"

"Die?" Connor ventured, "No. Well, yeah actually, he's gone now, but not quite then. It was actually, um… it was because me mum got sick. Really sick. I went to live with me gran and gramps and we spent all our spare time with her in the hospital. Started the dinosaur database together, we did. Me and me mum."

"Was she sick for long?" She wondered, she was often curious about his mother but had never had the courage to ask before. Connor always spoke so cheerfully and fondly about his mother, but he never went to see her and if he called her, it was never when she was around the flat.

"About a year." He admitted, an odd tone to his voice, "She was really determined she was going to get well enough to take me skateboarding for me fourteenth birthday and we would get ice cream and she would come home and we would be a family again, just me and her, like always."

Something about the way he said that gave Abby a bad feeling, "Did she miss your birthday?"

"No. She came home and it was the best birthday I ever had." He paused, like he wasn't sure he wanted to continue, "And then… and then a few weeks later she died peacefully in her sleep."

"Connor…" She tensed a little against his touch and his fingers stilled against her arm, "You always talked about your mum like she's alive."

"Yeah, sorry." He mumbled, resuming his gentle touches, though the patterns he traced on her sleeve were now more nervous than absentminded, "Sometimes I like to pretend that I can forget that she isn't."

"'S okay." She murmured, reaching up and covering his hand with hers, "Did you live with your grandparents then?"

"For a bit." She could almost hear him wrinkle up his nose, "But they were old and me gran was getting a bit of dementia, she couldn't really look after me so it was all on me gramps. And he never really got over me mum dying. I lived with them for about eight months and then when me gramps had his heart attack and died, me grab went into a home. And that's why… that's why I was in foster care."

"You were…?" She made a little sound of disbelief, "Three years we've been best mates, why did we never talk about this before?"

"You didn't seem to want to." Connor pointed out gently, "And I never wanted to push. I was scared you were going to chuck me out of the flat."

"And then I did anyways." She spat bitterly.

"For Jack." He reminded her, "He's your only family."

"Sort of. Pretty sure my mum and step dad are still out there but I don't care to see them." She sighed, "Poor Jack. Lester is going to have to tell him I'm gone."

"Poor Lester." Connor joked, earning him a light smack on the arm. "Ow…"

"Who does he have to call for you?" She wondered suddenly, "Your gran?"

"No, she passed away when I was nineteen." He sighed, "Honestly Abby, there isn't anyone to call. I'm the perfect ARC employee, no one is going to miss me."

Her heart gave a little squeeze and impulsively she caught his hand, weaving her fingers through his, "No one who isn't here."

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James Lester was having a truly awful day. It was never a pleasant task, calling the next of kin of missing or deceased members of his staff, but it seemed strange and unusual punishment to have to do it for three members of the field team in one go.

He started with the easiest, if that was something he could say, he'd known Danny for the least amount of time so he had managed to keep his professional demeanor while he assured the man's parents that while it was true that the second of their two sons was now considered missing in action at a job he hadn't even told them he was changing to, they weren't giving up on finding him just yet.

Abby's brother had been harder. For one thing, he'd had a glimpse of what they did, he knew at least some fraction of the danger his sister was exposed to, so his promise that they would keep looking for her fell a little flat. His saving grace was that the conversation was short, Jack didn't wail the way Mrs. Quinn had so one I'm sorry was enough to end the conversation.

He had saved the hardest for last. Connor. He would deny it if anyone asked, but Lester dreaded admitting to the loss of Connor to himself as much as he did telling whoever the boy had listed as his next of kin. In spite of his best efforts, he'd become a little… sentimental about his irritating but good hearted flatmate and in the three days that he had been gone, he had found the silence in the flat disturbing to the point that he had, for now, declined to surrender Sid and Nancy to the menagerie. He would, of course, have to get around to that before Connor's next of kin came to collect his things, he resolved, flipping the boy's file open to the dreaded page.

The page was blank. That made a depressing amount of sense, Lester realized as he thought back to when he discovered their resident inventor sleeping in the break room, he had chosen to believe at that time that he made that decision because he was hopeful of the impermanence of his removal from Ms. Maitland's flat, but it rather seemed that he had, in fact, likely had nowhere else to go. Lester had, of course, known about Connor's time in foster care from his background check. He'd known that despite the fond and distinctly present tense manner that he spoke about his mother, the woman had passed away from cancer when Connor was just barely fourteen and that he'd had little other family to care for him. He was, however, also aware that Connor had a living, if a little estranged father living in London, whom Lester had presumed he would be calling in this instance. Instead, the closest thing to next of kin information that Connor had bothered to provide him with was a sad, five word note scrawled at the bottom of the page.

_Just tell Abby I'm sorry._

Lester snapped the file shut a little more angrily than he intended too. He told himself that he was angry because now he had to deal with all of Connor's stuff, but that felt about as believable as his attempt to convince Jack that they could still find Abby and bring her home. If he was willing to be honest with himself, which he wasn't, he would admit that he was angry because in his own way, he had loved Abby and Connor. How could he not? They were all that had remained of the original team and when they had first blundered into his life, they had practically still been children. They arguably still were children.

He didn't quite love them the way he loved his own children, of course, though they often almost felt like his kids and his wife had jokingly referred to the team as his work family on more than one occasion. But no, he loved them more the way he had grown to love Archie, the dog that his actual children had convinced him they were responsible enough to keep. He didn't want the dog. He certainly had better things to do than care for the dog every time his kids disproved their own claims of responsibility. And yet he couldn't help secretly loving the way he was greeted at the door with that happy, wagging tail. That's what living with Connor had been like. His incessant cheerful babbling had become akin to Archie's wagging tail.

He paused outside the door to his flat. This would be the third night he was returning home to an empty flat. There was no wagging tail waiting for him behind that door. Taking a deep breath, he unlocked the door, dropping is briefcase inside and making his way to the livingroom. There was no point in putting things off any longer, he supposed, grabbing one of the cardboard boxes he'd brought from home. If no one was coming to get Connor's stuff, it was up to him.

With a resigned sigh, James Lester began dropping items into the box.

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